According to Dufour “ One of the most effective strategies
for bringing district goals to life is to insist that all schools create goals
that are specifically linked to district goals” (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many,
2010). How do we do that? We use SMART goals. SMART is an acronym for Strategic, Measurable, Attainable, Results
oriented, and Time bound. If it doesn’t have these characteristics it isn’t a
SMART goal. If we want our goals to be successful we need to link the school
goals to the district goals. To make the final tie, we need to link the school
collaborating team goals to the school goals. Goals can be effective if
everyone is on the same page when the school goals are aligned to the district
goals, and the team goals are aligned to the school goals.
SMART goals have been used by other companies and
organizations for a long time and now are coming into education. This is an
effective approach when schools are writing goals. In the article SMART Goals, SMART Schools, a school wrote
SMART goals to increase kindergarten writing skills for upper and lower case
letters. They saw an overwhelming increase of over 60% in students work. They
contribute it to the hard work of the teachers and the administration to agreeing
and sticking to the Strategic, Measurable, Attainable, Results oriented, and
Time bound (SMART) goals that they wrote. O’Neill writes, “SMART goals help us
test the effectiveness of our instructional process and programs” (O’Neil,
2000).
Looking at the results from that one case study in the
article from O’Neill and reading the text book Learning by Doing you can see
that using SMART goals can really be effective. If everyone is on board, and goals
are written well using the characteristics of the SMART acronym great things can
happen.
References:
DuFour R., DuFour R., Eaker R., Many T. (2010). Learning
by Doing: A Hand Book for Professional Learning Communities at Work.
Bloomington: Solution Tree Press.
O'Neill, J. (2000). SMART Goals, SMART Schools. Educational
Leadership, 46-50
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